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Topic: JP Aerospace updates (Read 29962 times)

Yes. Absolutely. Still, if he wants to try something new and it:s self-funding. Who cares?

Having a bit too high hopes for atmospheric boyancy is not exactly a new thing (Francesco Lana de Terzi and his copper spheres with vacuum inside creating flying boats comes to mind). But you're right, if the money keeps coming then go for it. The Dark Sky Station could actually happen and be useful, this ascender ship is needed to get to it.

15 months since Ascender 26 flew (to half the altitude of this flight).

Edit: JP's blog entry

Quote

Last Sunday the Ascender 36 airship took off from our new launch facility in Northern Nevada.

The first flight of Ascender 36 was a real shake down. It took two hours more than planned to get her into the air. Instead of the forecasted calm morning, we had windy condition with the wind howling from the opposite direction. However when we got her into the air she put her nose up and screamed in to the sky. Our minimum goal was to fly to 7,000 feet. If all went well we would push bit by bit to 10,000 feet. Our goal climb rate was 400 feet per minute. In the end we climbed an average 582 feet per minute and flew all the way to 13,512 feet. We landed her 11 miles down range.

- Their (small) hypersonic wind tunnel is operating at Mach 3.8 (was designed for Mach 4 but can't reach it)- Over 100 firings now of their (tiny) plasma engines- Looking to use air beam structures as the internal struss for an airship this fall- Ascender 36 to fly again in about a month- 100 ft airship [must be Ascender 9?] this June, currently half-way through construction- This airship will ultimately go to 45,000 ft- Will start construction of 175ft Ascender later this year (may be September), which will ultimately fly to 65k – 70k ft- Next dark star station flight probably not until late 2018- Still making progress and no show stoppers yet. Now 4 full-time staff on board.

Longer-term:

- Will be 18+ months until an Ascender crosses 100k ft- Plan for dark station at 140k ft is not to use exotic materials but to just replace components as required (eg internal floatation cells every 30 days). That way they can use cheap, readily available plastics and instead take the hit on maintenance- JP Aerospace will look to do space tourism, but only once they have airships carrying people regularly- The huge airship that climbs from the dark station to space wouldn’t break Mach 1 until past 200k, maybe 240k ft

It's nearly all airship-to-orbit! AtO is a 3 part system, Ascender is the first part, dark star station the second, the hypersonic wind tunnel supports research into active drag reduction for the third part etc.

It's nearly all airship-to-orbit! AtO is a 3 part system, Ascender is the first part, dark star station the second, the hypersonic wind tunnel supports research into active drag reduction for the third part etc.

Too bad the "active drag reduction" bit is the only part that really matters. They need to reduce drag by a factor of a million. In the real world, people go to great lengths to reduce drag by a few percentage points.

If they could actually achieve "active drag reduction" by the factor of a million they need to reach orbital speed, then they would revolutionize lots of much, much bigger industries than space launch.

They've provided no evidence so far to support the extraordinary claim they are able to pull off such a feat.

Why a million? IIRC JP has claimed the amount of drag reduction they need is similar to what was achieved in lab tests in the 60s/70s(?). Obviously a lab is very different from an operational vehicle but it certainly didn't sound like JP thinks it's anything like a factor of a million.